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Twilight Sparkle is the True Crime of a Song
The contents of this story are no longer available
You may have thought that last bit was a punchline. I think it was your subconscious trying to warn you. Pinkamena’s Wake this isn’t. Sorry, but it just didn’t do anything for me beyond some appreciable wordplay.
er...I recognize some lines in there from songs in the show and some fan made stuff, I think? There is some neat word salad going on here, but it kind of reflects poorly that I had to read and mouth along with each sentence to keep my place in it and meaning, if there is any, never really gelled together.
...yeah, no. Sorry, but this feels like an entirely pointless story (and making fun of "nonsensical pretentious art" is really cliche at this point.) Spike's unnecessary cussing in the final sentence left a distaste in my mouth, too.
You were lucky, because I read the first paragraph and was about to give up when I had an epiphany and rolled down past the linguistic garbage.
The rest of the fic is fine, but not funny. I mean, if you choose to go this way, the best example to date might be Cold's Naked Singularity. It's difficult to challenge, because it's a real good fic.
The end of this one is acceptable. I wasn't jarred by Spike's swearing at the end, but really the beginning ruined it. You should rework this from the ground up to make it more appealing.
The rest of the fic is fine, but not funny. I mean, if you choose to go this way, the best example to date might be Cold's Naked Singularity. It's difficult to challenge, because it's a real good fic.
The end of this one is acceptable. I wasn't jarred by Spike's swearing at the end, but really the beginning ruined it. You should rework this from the ground up to make it more appealing.
This falls somewhere between V's famous soliloquy, and a certain sentence (27 pages long) in The Illuminatis Triology, which isn't, by itself a bad thing. It seems to do a paragraph-long reinterpretation of the songs from the show as well, which is slightly interesting.
Then it cuts out to a frame, and the author mocks their own story, which to me comes across as a trite way of saying "See, I'm being ironically non-nonsensical, so now it's art!"
It's not, and the meta-humor makes it fall precipitously in my estimation. Sorry.
Then it cuts out to a frame, and the author mocks their own story, which to me comes across as a trite way of saying "See, I'm being ironically non-nonsensical, so now it's art!"
It's not, and the meta-humor makes it fall precipitously in my estimation. Sorry.
Deposit wholly your woes in the riverstream, and take up the tainted elision as flywheel gyrates… No, sorry. I would like to produce a review in the style of this piece, and on a good day I might achieve it, but this is not that day.
I can catch bits of show references and song lyrics and titles, but I cannot quite string them together as to make sense. I admire the sound of what the author has produced, and it took some erudition and cultural knowledge to produce it. But it has just a bit too much sense to it to make one reluctant to interpret it as pure nonsense, and not enough sense to encourage one to look for a deeper meaning.
The ending seems to be tacked on to justify or excuse the first half, but it just seems to show that the author doesn’t think it’s worth puzzling over either, and if that’s the case, why should I bother?
I can catch bits of show references and song lyrics and titles, but I cannot quite string them together as to make sense. I admire the sound of what the author has produced, and it took some erudition and cultural knowledge to produce it. But it has just a bit too much sense to it to make one reluctant to interpret it as pure nonsense, and not enough sense to encourage one to look for a deeper meaning.
The ending seems to be tacked on to justify or excuse the first half, but it just seems to show that the author doesn’t think it’s worth puzzling over either, and if that’s the case, why should I bother?
Author, I'm sorry to admit this, but I mostly skipped Twilight's writings in this story. Looking at the comments tell me that some of these were song or fandom references, but I'm not quite able to recognize them, and thus that whole section of the story becomes basically gibberish to me. Furthermore, the ending part really just makes the story itself even less comprehensible in my opinion. Why did Twilight decide to write that of all things instead of an actual story? Why is Twilight entering a youth writing contest when this seems to be the adult version of Twilight being portrayed? When and where did Spike learn "human" swear words, and why is he using them when I cannot imagine canon Spike even considering doing so?
This kinda seems like an attempt at nonsensical or off-the-wall humor, but it just ends up confusing and kinda feeling like it's trying to make an excuse for itself to exist. Sorry, but this is a complete flop for me. .-.
EDIT: I refreshed myself on the lyrics of some of the S1 songs, and I now recognize a fair bit of these. However, on a second and more thorough read, this almost made it worse. The substituted lyrics seem either really dark and mean-spirited or completely random. I just... don't get what you were going for. At all.
This kinda seems like an attempt at nonsensical or off-the-wall humor, but it just ends up confusing and kinda feeling like it's trying to make an excuse for itself to exist. Sorry, but this is a complete flop for me. .-.
EDIT: I refreshed myself on the lyrics of some of the S1 songs, and I now recognize a fair bit of these. However, on a second and more thorough read, this almost made it worse. The substituted lyrics seem either really dark and mean-spirited or completely random. I just... don't get what you were going for. At all.
Not to pile further on this story, but I'm trying to read it for my slate (with the deadline ticking in) and struggling pretty badly. The thing about stories like Finnegan's Wake is that they're super-dense and almost unreadable, but they're unreadable in a way that has layers of meaning if you stop and pick it apart. Contrast with your opening:
What even is a "fulminating recidivism of bathos"?
fulminating, adj.: hurling denunciations or menaces
recidivism, n.: the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend
bathos, n.: (especially in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
Trying to assemble that phrase from its grammatical parts, presumably "bathos" is a metaphorical representation for a character who exemplifies that trait, and we have to dig for further clues in the fact they wear "sun-drenched florets" (little flowers), except the florets come from something tidal, meaning they're water flowers, or perhaps associated with the lunar cycle except "sun-garbed" contradicts that. Getting back to the bathos, we have fulminating recidivism, which ... um ... implies someone who keeps relapsing into making threats? That plus the bathos plus the context of pony suggests we're talking about Trixie, but then I don't get the tidal sun-garbed florets, since she wears a cape and hat with moon and star symbols.
Put it all together and it sounds like we're talking about Trixie being the only one to enjoy someone's singing. If that's not what you're going for, author, I suggest you take a look at your vocabulary.
And while "fulminating recidivism of bathos" has a vaguely catchy 5/4 cadence going on, I'm going to score prose that has both meaning and meter over prose that just has the latter.
... he writes, before reaching the second half of the story.
So yeah, I think I see what you were going for here, but I feel like you outclevered yourself. The problem is that your audience has to endure several hundred words of deliberate gibberish before a jump cut to your framing story, and the framing story's point appears to be that the gibberish we read is gibberish, which I feel like I was perfectly capable of figuring out on my own. That steamrolls any humor I could have gotten out of your punchline, and leaves me greatly annoyed that I wasted so much time looking up dictionary definitions on a good-faith assumption that you were trying to Finnegan all up in this.
That said, I'm going to try to set aside my resentment and score this based on what it was trying to do.
Can I suggest flipping the order of the scenes, or better yet, deleting the first scene and then just dribbling it out in small doses as we go so we can discover the horror of it along with Spike? I feel like this could have been legitimately funny if we followed Spike sipping some coffee, picking up the manuscript, reading that first wretchedly incomprehensible line, and doing a spit take.
I guess the big takeaway here is expectations management. Signal to readers as early as possible what you're doing. It's funnier if we're in on the joke.
Tier: Needs Work
... loved by none except the fulminating recidivism of bathos donning the sun-garbed florets borne out of the normalcy of the tide.
What even is a "fulminating recidivism of bathos"?
fulminating, adj.: hurling denunciations or menaces
recidivism, n.: the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend
bathos, n.: (especially in a work of literature) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous.
Trying to assemble that phrase from its grammatical parts, presumably "bathos" is a metaphorical representation for a character who exemplifies that trait, and we have to dig for further clues in the fact they wear "sun-drenched florets" (little flowers), except the florets come from something tidal, meaning they're water flowers, or perhaps associated with the lunar cycle except "sun-garbed" contradicts that. Getting back to the bathos, we have fulminating recidivism, which ... um ... implies someone who keeps relapsing into making threats? That plus the bathos plus the context of pony suggests we're talking about Trixie, but then I don't get the tidal sun-garbed florets, since she wears a cape and hat with moon and star symbols.
Put it all together and it sounds like we're talking about Trixie being the only one to enjoy someone's singing. If that's not what you're going for, author, I suggest you take a look at your vocabulary.
And while "fulminating recidivism of bathos" has a vaguely catchy 5/4 cadence going on, I'm going to score prose that has both meaning and meter over prose that just has the latter.
... he writes, before reaching the second half of the story.
So yeah, I think I see what you were going for here, but I feel like you outclevered yourself. The problem is that your audience has to endure several hundred words of deliberate gibberish before a jump cut to your framing story, and the framing story's point appears to be that the gibberish we read is gibberish, which I feel like I was perfectly capable of figuring out on my own. That steamrolls any humor I could have gotten out of your punchline, and leaves me greatly annoyed that I wasted so much time looking up dictionary definitions on a good-faith assumption that you were trying to Finnegan all up in this.
That said, I'm going to try to set aside my resentment and score this based on what it was trying to do.
Can I suggest flipping the order of the scenes, or better yet, deleting the first scene and then just dribbling it out in small doses as we go so we can discover the horror of it along with Spike? I feel like this could have been legitimately funny if we followed Spike sipping some coffee, picking up the manuscript, reading that first wretchedly incomprehensible line, and doing a spit take.
I guess the big takeaway here is expectations management. Signal to readers as early as possible what you're doing. It's funnier if we're in on the joke.
Tier: Needs Work
